halo
by shhutter
Summary: i was but the silhouette to her halo.


**halo**

_[challenge—miss perfect]_

* * *

><p>Moonhigh colored the stars like washed-out ice.<p>

A soft whisper rung through the nursery. It reminded me of silver streams that glittered white when the moon kissed its gentle current. Mellow, calm, powerful. It made me believe the stories were real. My mother's voice.

My sister laid beside me. She was only slightly younger. I could still see her kitten fluff, peeking out through her newly grown furs, soft with the colors of greenleaf petals and the sky when the sun and rain meet. I could see her wide unblinking eyes, watery with moonshine and wonder. Even then, she was more beautiful than me.

I pretended to be half-asleep by the time my mother finished the last word, nuzzled us both (but there was always that hint of greater affection to her that she couldn't yet feel) and padded near-silently out the cold den.

I saw my sister open one icy blue eye drearily, but a content smile on her lips. "Those fairytales Mother tells us. Do you think they're real?" she whispered with that twinkle in her eyes (hope was always on her side; there were clichés like that which could flow on and on but they were only real if she said so), her warm breath tickling my ear. I grunted and turned away.

"Do you believe we'll get happy endings?"

I narrowed my eyes at the ground, where the dim, almost non-existent light of the outside world met with all that we knew. I stayed silent as I felt her curl up beside me, slowly plummeting into dreams that lit her paths so bright, and murmur one last sentence:

"I believe we will."

The chains of stars started fading and I shivered as a chilling blackness enveloped us both.

[h a l o]

Sunhigh was lighting the panes of sky ablaze.

My paws were trembling as my claws left slivers of scratches on the smooth stone ledge. Hers weren't.

I could hear their voices roaring over the liquid silence that seemed to drip down solidly like leaf-bare icicles just a few heartbeats ago. They were cheering. Not for me.

I snuck a wavering glance at the one who stood on the right of me. Higher. Prouder. Her aquamarine eyes seemed to glow while the fallen specks of sun tinted them gold. (Mine were blue. Not the color of the sun-drown-place reflecting a bright sky. Not the color of the rain, all silver and charming and beautiful. Not like hers.) She was smiling faintly but warmly like that was normal, like she was so mature now. I saw a ring of sundrops gather around the tip of her rosy, soft fur and form a halo around her sleek figure. I shrunk a little farther down, as if that would make me suddenly vanish or lessen my existence.

I could hear them chanting my name too. But it sounded different. Unimportant.

Dead, dull, and slowly fading away like a crippled leaf-fall maple, the ceremony was soon a short-lived moment of the past.

[h a l o]

Dusk painted the clouds a dusty golden-and-pink.

The forest was unusually quiet. The quiet where I could hear my own heartbeat even though it wasn't racing and I knew something was going to happen. The kind of quiet where the songbirds didn't even bother to serenade, not even a sad, dreary, strung-out tune because there was no one to sing it for.

I followed the sound of hushed laughter and breathy whispers and hollow, rattled promises — _"I'll be waiting here for you, I promise." _

And then I saw _him_.

(It didn't hit me with a rock-hard _bang_. It didn't all crash down, my world, those fleeting moments where I thought what I had was love, no. It wasn't like that.)

With _her_.

(I was feeling everything slip away like the last light of yesterday, trickling down, drying, disappearing. Gone.)

My breath hitched, I bit back a sudden wetness in my eyes, every nerve in my body was screeching so shrilly it was like I was being torn apart right there (and they didn't see, they didn't know; what else did they foolishly believe?), but I couldn't move. It was louder now. I could hear voices swarming me from all directions, and all of them were mine. I couldn't hear my heartbeat anymore.

I wanted to stop everything.

(And I ran. As fast as I could, as far as I wanted to.)

[h a l o]

It was dawn. (How long had I been chasing that darkness of mine?) I stood before a shrunken meadow, wind clawing my throat brittle and hollow.

I finally lifted my head and processed what was in front of me. I saw how the world wasn't beautiful and perfect in the way of cotton clouds with golden linings, blanketed endlessly. How the land wasn't brilliant and clear in the way of sunlight dappling the darkness shadows, stretching the bright days on for eternity.

Everything was dreary, chilly, withering away.

The dim sun and I switched places. My shadow stretched longer and longer, fading by the second, behind me into the tall golden grass. I realized I couldn't see my own halo when I was just a silhouette. I'd long given up. I'd find someone, someday, who could.

Nothing could stop my tears from rolling down my cheeks and vanishing into the earth this time.

_"I believe we will." _

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><p><strong>01.20.15<strong>  
><strong>by: shhutter<strong>


End file.
